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Among the sportier introductions was the low-hung Six Cylinder Jordan (green finish with khaki top). Chevrolet had a-"Sport Cabriolet" which is a coupé of roadster type: an enclosed front compartment with a rumble seat in back. The Chevrolet line is now finished in grey and uses disc wheels. Chevrolet advertising spoke of "the most outstanding automotive success in recent years." For other cars, other merits were advertised.
But the most conspicuous announcement came from Studebaker. Albert Russel Erskine has, since 1915, been President of the Studebaker Corp., South Bend, Ind. In-September and October, 1924, he went to Europe, visited automobile plants, asked questions of manufacturers and engineers, carefully inspected every car and body in the shows of London and Paris. Favorably impressed, President Erskine invited to Paris every Studebaker dealer and representative in Europe and some from Asia, gave a banquet, rose from his seat, fired at his agents a series of questions prepared by himself, received their answers in written form, took the answers back to the U. S., pondered them well. Then, for two years, Studebaker engineers and body designers pored over blueprints, utilized proving grounds—and produced the Erskine Six. It is a small car (no smaller than an Overland Whippet). It is low-hung; has a small, high speed, high compression motor; "2 1/3 litres," the advertising says — which is the Parisian way of saying that a motor is 40 horsepower.
Living testimony to the potency of double-page "spreads" in the Saturday Evening Post and else-where—spreads that carried Mr. Erskine's photograph and a signed statement* by the Studebaker directors—greater crowds gazed longer at the little Erskine than at any other exhibit.
*See footnote, col. 3.
*Other less famed trucks that were absent: Gotfredson, Hahn, Henney, Hercules, Hermath, Kankakee, Lathrop, Master, Menominee, Michigan, Oneida, Oshkosh, Red Ball, Sayers, Standard, Stoughton, Tiffin, Traylor, Vulcan.
*The statement concluded: "We. . . chose the Erskine name is Erskine primarily because responsible. . Albert . ." Russel